Helevorn

Forthcoming Displeasures

Helevorn is a six-piece dark metal/ doom metal band from Spain that have come forth to deliver a second album since their 2005 debut, Fragments. Using the musical structure akin to bands like Draconian and My Dying Bride and vocal patterns like Opeth and Paradise Lost, Helevorn have crafted a clean, beautifully depressing album. Forthcoming Displeasures is certainly no displeasure to anyone who enjoys any sort of doom metal. Each track offers something strong, with nothing to cringe or frown at.

The most prominent features on Forthcoming Displeasures is the gothic elements through the guitars, vocals and keyboards. The guitars are not crushingly slow like that heard on funeral doom, or heavily distorted. Instead, they are mid paced and chord focused, keeping an even sound with the drums and keyboards. A lot of times they will let up, allowing the piano/keyboard moments to come in clearly before diving into a wailing solo that doom metal is famous for. Again, the fact that the music as a whole is so cleanly produced and harmonized is what makes this album so well done. Vocally, the death growls are the standard roars of anguish, but the clean vocals are fantastic. Deep, emotional, and almost having an electronic edge to it, they are hypnotic and soothing in their own sense to go along with the calming parts of the piano. Even the spoken word passages are haunting.

Not all of the album is calming, however. Some tracks like "Hopeless Truth" have a much darker, more evil tone to them in the sense they are more guitar and drum driven. However, there's also some great clean vocal work done on this track, which does a good job at substituting the atmosphere that they keyboards originally created. Other tracks like "On Shores (Of a Dying Sea)" sound directly like something taken from a Draconian album; long, haunting, and melodic. Even the growls sound similar. It's a good thing that Helevorn decided not to use female vocals or they'd risk losing their unique sound. Altogether, Forthcoming Displeasures is VERY good. Heavily Draconian influenced, or not, the band certainly makes a sound for itself, especially in vocals. Gothic doom metal fans or anyone hunting a romantically suicidal album will have found their mark. May these doomsters keep on making the world a better place of melancholy!